Insurrections (17 page)

I know where Ezekiel is. He's on a beach—in the Caribbean or Europe, somewhere where's there's no chance he'll be snatched and brought back to face his problems. He's looking calm, but yet still troubled. There on that beach, Zeke sips beer after beer as the waves crash. And he cocks his ear toward the whispering foam, hoping it will tell him how things went so wrong.

My father, dead now, but back then standing in that Episcopal church. Oak brown like the benches and tall like the sturdy tree out front that I often thought of when I thought of him. In fact, this Sunday I imagined him as that tree bursting from the ground beneath the undercroft, shattering the floor of the nave, the leaves of his head scraping the church ceiling. My father swayed, standing there, clean-shaven with a strong chin he used to hide beneath stubble or overgrowth. A shining knight among pawns, king to me and my mother and my sister (but in the church Jesus Christ is King and it's wrong to say otherwise). Impeccably dressed. Thin knot in a tie lain slightly askew, just enough so we all remembered who he was and how far he'd come.

This was our happily ever after. Dad had stopped drinking. He and my mother were now getting along. My sister was in her first year of college at Freedman's University. She lived on campus and didn't often attend church with us anymore. My father told anyone who would listen and even those who wouldn't that she had made the dean's list. We had even moved north from our Southside apartment to a house my parents purchased near the far end of the park. Dad now worked steady and worked well. At least once per week he'd speak of the virtues of being one's own boss. And each Sunday he said it was our duty to give it up to God, and I didn't mind much.

On this particular Sunday, just after the rector made a point during the sermon, the scent of my father's heavy cologne mingled with my mother's perfume, causing me to release a sneeze that echoed through the cavernous church building. It was as if I shouted an Amen. The pastor
responded with the same joke he told whenever anyone sneezed—
Amens, achoos
, I'll take what I can get. I looked up at my father expecting to see anger bubbling behind his eyes. In the old days he would often scream about self-control when I shot forth a thunderous sneeze. Once, he waited until we got home from church and slapped me, a lesson he called it. That was long ago. So much had shifted within the man. He looked down, put his hand to my head, and smiled. He gave my spongy naps a squeeze. I took it as I took all his actions in those days: as parts of an extended apology for the rough times.

Sometimes he'd catch me gazing up at him while he sang Jesus songs—his voice lithe and bouncy—and he'd tap my hymnal, an order for me to serenade the Lord. But my voice embarrassed me. Croaky and cracky. Struggling to change from one non-tuneful state to another. God gave you that voice so you could praise him in any and every way you can, my father told me. Still, I rarely sang along.

I never did understand how my father so smoothly held notes for the delight of all around him. Even in the hard days when my father's voice was liquor-stained, he could still sound like Paul Robeson's little brother.

There was a moment that Sunday that I had looked toward for most of my short life. It came after a soaring Jesus number, and when the organist trailed off, the congregation sat with a thump. The wood whined beneath our weight. There was a silence punctuated by coughs and clearing throats. The rector started with the announcements. This was the announcement of a lifetime. Crafted specifically for me. The announcement that separated this boyhood from that manhood. Next week, confirmation class would begin. Twelve- and thirteen-year-olds and all other teens who had not yet been confirmed in Christ were to sign up for classes leading to the spring Sunday when we were to affirm our dedication to the Lord. My heart leapt. I nearly jumped from my seat and broke into open applause. With a class and a few simple words I would be a man in Christ's eyes. I suppressed my smile as well as the urge to race to the narthex to sign up for classes. Instead, I prayed solemnly.

No, that's not what happened. I remember it that way often, but the truth leaks through sometimes. At the moment of the big announcement, the rector had lulled me to sleep, and my head was back and my mouth open. My mother popped me on the cheek, lightly, but strong enough to send a message.

Open your eyes you lazy—, she whispered. You hear what the rector said? Don't forget to sign up for confirmation class when the service is over.

Confirmation? Was it really time? The service couldn't end soon enough, and after the final acolyte in the recessional passed, I raced to the narthex to find the list. Mine became the second name after Alana Spencer, intriguing because I was relatively new and didn't know any of the other children in the parish. I wondered just whom I would be stepping into adulthood with.

Bobby! my mother called. It was Sunday in the late afternoon on the week confirmation class was to begin. I was in the back shooting a ball at the hoop my father had installed shortly after we moved in. The chilly air caused my nose to run as I jogged about the concrete, dribbling the ball and stopping short to pull awkward jump shots. Bobby! She raised her voice, still refusing to call me Bob or Rob or anything with any sort of dignity. My father had dibs on Robert, which was understandable. Even years later when I had grown into adulthood and my father was gone, she refused to call me Robert.

Goddamn it, Bobby, she called through the window. What goes through your big head when you ignore me? Don't make me call your father for you.

I stilled the bouncing basketball and ambled over to the window. Huh? What did you say, Ma? I couldn't hear you, I lied, speaking loudly as if there was a din to rise above. I wanted the act to be effective. My father could be a cold and ruthless disciplinarian, at least with me; the rod in my sister's life had mostly been spared. He was probably in the basement working on repairing and restoring an old table—a beloved table left to him by my grandmother after she passed—that he said would make its debut at my confirmation party. It was missing a leg and covered in dust and scratches. He had started spending most of his free time sweating over the thing. When he was down there I heard the drone of power tools, the pounding of his hammer, and the stray screamed expletive.

Go take a shower, she said. It's time to get ready for your class. And put on the good clothes I left on your bed. Don't be going into the church looking ridiculous.

Normally I would protest her choice of clothes. The collars were too
big, the pant legs too straight. But I had done all the disobeying I would be allowed for the day. I slunk past her and went into the shower, and when I got to my bed, I eyed the clothes she wanted me to wear as a man eyes shit stuck to the sole of his shoes. The massive collars. The faded straight-leg high-water slacks that fit nicely a year ago. They were all hand-me-downs my cousins wore in decades past, donated by my aunt when we were poor. To wear this outfit was to not accept our victory over poverty.

I began to squabble with her when I got out the shower, a damp towel wrapped around my waist and my bird chest sticking out.

Mom, you got me looking lame.

You are lame, she replied. Now put on the clothes. This lasted several minutes until my father came up the stairs. He squinted and flattened his mouth into a line, his mask of irritation.

Boy, get ready so I can drive you over there and get back in time to watch
60 Minutes
, he said. I slunk away and changed into my ridiculous outfit.

My father, despite hustling me, knocked about, collecting his things while I waited for him by the door, and ended up dropping me off after class began. I shuffled into a tiny room with tiny chairs and five faces I had never seen before. The rector barely seemed fazed; he didn't at all pause or stammer at my interruption. The students—all slumped left and right in uncomfortable poses—sat around a circular table while the rector paced. He wore a black turtleneck and jeans. His bald head appeared freshly moisturized and nearly sparkled, depending on where he stood.

I sat on the periphery of things, behind the circle. In front of me was a girl with long, straight black hair that shone like the rector's pale bald head. The rector stuttered a bit when I snatched a seat outside the group, but he carried on with whatever he had been talking about. He spoke in his normal mumble, and without a church podium, he paced. After he finished a point, he asked the group to make a space for me. The girl with shiny black hair and the skinny boy next to her parted and I pulled up my chair.

There's room for all of us at God's table, the rector said.

This God's table? I asked. So it doesn't belong to the church? I glanced quickly at the girl to my left—I assumed somehow, because she was the
prettiest, that she was Alana—to see how she responded to my joke. She, like the rector and everyone else, pretended it never happened.

The rector asked me to introduce myself, and I told them my name and that I had spent most of my years on the Southside (this I said with tough, staccato inflections) before moving north. The girl with straight black hair was indeed Alana. There were two other girls. A short girl with a tough creasy face, whom I privately nicknamed the Raisin, and a girl with a soft pretty face and unnaturally meaty arms who, no matter what her name was, became Popeye. Then there were two guys. They looked Italian or something; I couldn't place it at the time, but somehow different than the few white people I encountered in those days. The smaller one announced proudly that he was the older fraternal twin, Mauricio he said his name was, but we could call him Maurice. The younger twin, taller, handsomer, and more confident, informed us all that he and his brother were Alana's cousins on her mother's side.

While the rector droned, I ignored him and looked around the room. Here is where they held Sunday school and the parallel children's service. Pictures of smiling white biblical cartoon children adorned the walls. Some were shepherds. Some knelt and prayed. Jesus hung on a wooden cross.

Tomás, the tall twin, raised his hand. My uncle says Jesus was black, he said, and then paused almost as a challenge to the rector.

He was God, what does it matter? Alana said.

No, Tomás replied. He was a man. Tomás turned to the rector. Wasn't he a man, Rector Byron?

Yes, the rector replied softly. But he was a special man. The only begot—

See, so it does matter what Uncle Jonah says. My dad gets mad when he hears Uncle Jonah say that. Says there is no way Jesus was a nigger—

Tomás, will you be quiet! Alana said.

Tomás, the rector said, we won't have that kind of lang—

What? I was only repeating what my dad says. I like Uncle Jonah. He's one of those
strong black men
. My dad says he likes him too. But I got my doubts about that. He don't like that his sister married him; I can tell. But I don't see nothing wrong with it. I like Jesus, and if Jesus was black, then there can't be anything wrong associating with black people and marrying them and stuff. I might marry a black woman, seeing as how Jesus was black. He was black, right?

We all gazed at the rector's shiny white head, waiting for a reply to what now seemed like the question of the ages. Even White Jesus, hanging from a cross on the wall, seemed to lean in to hear the answer. I had never given the issue of Jesus's race much thought, but now it was something burning. The rector made several false starts before speaking.

Perhaps we should take a bathroom break, he said finally, standing from the table. Before anyone could respond, he was through the door.

Of all the things I remember from that night—Alana's neck, the rector returning and pretending the previous minutes never happened, small talk with the Raisin and Popeye, the rector's admission that Noah was a drunk (which made me think of my father's old ways), Tomás grilling me for whatever reason—what I recall most brightly is Tomás standing in the hall looking sheepishly to the floor apologizing while his cousin chattered at him. Man, those wild dancing arms of hers.

That night I ate dinner after everyone else. My sister, I learned, had come for a quick bite and gone back to her dorm room. I picked at my rice, thinking about Alana Spencer, so forceful and powerful, backing down her blowhard cousin. And I thought about White Jesus, and I tried to picture Black Jesus but couldn't. My father sat under a dim lamp reading the newspaper. My mother sat by me, drinking a cup of grape juice.

What did you learn tonight? she asked.

That Jesus was black, I replied.

What? The rector told you that?

No, a kid in class.

Jesus was the son of God. God's representative. He was Jewish. And it doesn't matter. Damn negroes want to make everybody black.

It wasn't a black kid. He was a white boy. I think he's from Port Yooga.

I never seen white people in our church. Besides Rector Byron, of course.

Maybe they go to the eight-o'clock service.

Look, don't you pay attention to foolishness. Learn about the church and God and don't listen to people talking nonsense. White boy or negro.

I looked over at my father and noticed the slim smile on his lips. He didn't raise his eyes from the newspaper, so it was hard to tell whether he was grinning at us or the funny pages.

I was just teasing my mother. Wanted to see what she had to say. But
watching her reaction, I figured anything that annoyed her so much was worth believing in.

Alana Spencer. The name bounced around my skull after that first class and much of the next week. Imagining her became a nice mechanism of escape, especially in church. My mother often caught me staring into space when I was supposed to be singing or praying. You are the one who has to account for your soul, not me, she often whispered in between songs, and it was always loud enough for people around us to hear and give us strange looks. I wondered why Jesus would care if we sang songs in his honor. Why it mattered that we dropped to our knees like the naked women in the Cinemax movies I stayed up on weekends to watch. The need for praise seemed like a black trait. But then I figured that was a ridiculous thought.